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Wall of Weird – Coincidences

It occured to me that I have an awful lot of coincidence streaks in my life. Nothing that means anything, mind you — almost like a useless talent — but they happen often enough that I thought it might be fun to list them as they occur. So I will start with the leatest and add on from there as I run across them if I can keep them in the brain buffer long enough to get them listed here!

2014

May 2014 And that’s another giant chunk of posting nothing. Sigh. But I do have a big one I’ve actually remembered to share!

Artist Alley tables are at a premium for A-kon. They have way more people wanting one than they have room for. So you have to apply and the faster fingers get on the top list, a second list for those who didn’t quite hit the button fast enough for the first list (waiting list), and then everyone who didn’t make either list. We made it to the waiting list. And we waited.

Then when hubby and I went to see the latest X-Men film, I spotted the Purple Princess and her honey. We waved, exchanged greetings, and then she asked me if I’d seen her message on FB about an opening in the Artist Alley. I hadn’t! Not having made it to FB in weeks as work had been sucking me dry with a ton of overtime.

So she gave me the scoop and we went our separate ways, except we ended up in the same theater room as we were seeing the same movie! We decided Professor X concocted us seeing each other so I would not lose the opportunity to get into the show. Heh heh.

2013

Aug 2013 Wow, I’ve added nothing since last year. Eek! Not that weird stuff hasn’t conitnued. But it does go in waves. For instance the number sequence weirdness grew to a frenzy then died down for a while. It’s back again. I can’t make any sense of it at all!

Had a morbid one hit a few days ago. Had started reasing “A Casual Vacancy” by JK Rowling where the character in the first chapter dies from a brain annurism. I was teasing hubby about a headache and needing to be careful and then saw in the news that a famous radio personality may have died of exactly that over the weekend. Gave me chills…

2012

May 2012 Went to see The Lucky One with Zac Effron, but before the movie came one I saw a preview for Judy Sparks. Later I found out the author of the novel The Lucky One is based on is by Nicholas Sparks! o.O

A real zinger this time – Watching the Mentalist, whose protagnist is named Patrick Jane, then watched Supernatural and there was a Gloria Jane. Weirder was that after that, we watched an episode of Lost Girl we’d recorded weeks ago. There was a Gloria in that episode as well. Then to top it all off, Supernatural had the guys avoiding high fructose corn syrup as Leviathan had added stuff to it, so Dean got to experience the horror of trying to find foods that don’t use it and having a horrible time. Something I’d also been doing and horrified over myself.:P

March 2012 Had a doozy this month, aside from all the usual time and topic treds. This time I’d submitted a story to ASIM. During the week, around 6am I got an email notifying me that the story had passed on to the short list. Later the same day, I saw a tweet from a friend, Jane Lebak, stating exactly the same thing! How weird is that? Now we’ve got our fingers crossed to see if we might pass that final round and even end up on the same issue!:)

January 2012 Looks like I’ve neglected the wall a while. Though it hasn’t meant an actual lessesing of events! For instance…

For the last several months, time has been popping up sequentially. What I mean is things like 5:43, 4:23, 2:34, stuff like that. The occasional 5:55 still pops up as well. I keep thinking someone is trying to tell me something, but I haven’t been able to figure out what yet. 😛

Another weird one this month happened in Star Wars The Old Republic. My main is a Jedi Consular, but I also have an Imperial Spy for when hubby is not around to play. I named her ‘Larana’. The other day, I was following the Jedi Consular quest progression line and ran into a character named ‘Laranna’. Huh. When they first said her name, I was doing major double takes. Heh heh.

Have a doozy for this week. I’m in the middle of reading The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins, a novel written in 1859. And while reading it, I’ve had two occasions of coincidences colliding with the novel. The first might be a slight stretch: I saw the pilot for Touch with Keifer Sutherland, where the main point of the premise is how people and events can be connected and affect each other. I think this ties to The Woman In White for the amazing meeting between Anne Catherick and Walter Hartight. That one chance meeting connected them in such a way that it allowed them to realize vileness was a foot and led them down the path of destiny! The second, which definitely ties more into the coincidence, was the latest episode of the TV show Castle with Nathan Fillion! In this last episode, the murderered girl was actually someone who looked close to someone else and had taken their place. A very similar situation abounds in the novel with Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie! Not only do they very closely resemble each other, later in the book, a swap is made. Heh heh. Wonder if anything else will crop up before the novel is done. 🙂

2011

August 2011 Had a couple of funky ones on the same week. First one was looking at the clock at 4:32 then at my inbox which also said 432. The second was when John Picacio was tweeting about getting to Las Vegas for WorldCon, my ipod was playing “Viva Las Vegas”.:P

June 2011 I’ve missed a few – lost having to do with the same thing being said or done on non-related Tv shows. Really should write them down! Anyway this week I was reading a short story by Chuck Wendig – in it he had a line about “almost like he had catnip in his clothes”. Same night, watch a episode of Clanad 2 and they pretty much said the exact same thing about the protagonist. o.O

April 2011 Had a surreal weekend that only got worse with coincidences. While I knew there were fires in West Texas, I never realized they were so close to where I was going on Saturday 4/16/11. And to be honest, my crazy family never even mentioned it. On the way, as we’re tyring to follow instructions to Possum Kingdom Lake (Had never been there before) my mom calls at the exact worse moment, so we end up missing one of our exits and drive for fifteen or mote minutes before we realize things have gone amiss. When we tried to turn around, the first road we attempted was CLOSED! Finally found one open and were once more on our way. Then hubby took the wrong exit and we got lost a second time. Whee!

What makes it all weird and coincidental is that when we left Possum Kingdom Lake, a road we needed was closed, and then hubby once more took a wrong turn/exit so we were going on for thirty minutes before realizing we weren’t where we were supposed to be. (That whole day was insane! We saw smoke and burned fields and the wind shifted as we left so fires rekindled right next to where we drove past. Nuts!)

March 2011 My birth month has started out with a doozy of a coincidence flare. Went to go see the movie Adjustment Bureau. (Awesome movie, by the way!) Been having heavy sinus issues so brought some Ricola to suck on for my throat. There I sit, sucking away, when what do I see on David’s nighttable? A handful of the same Ricola I am currently sucking on!

That was weird enough, but then there was more! For the first time in nine months plus I’d put on one of my “Supernatural” TV show t-shirts. Who is on the credits of the film? None other than the creator of Supernatural, Eric Kripke! Dang! This could turn out to be a really really weird month. lol.

January 2011 Power went out at work. S and I were talking and she said she wanted to go home. Pretty tempted myself. So she decides if the power is not back by 1PM she’s out of there. I’m thinking to do the same. B1 tells her no, he needs her there and they haggle that she’ll stay till 1:15PM to see if the power comes back. At 1PM and 10 seconds the lights come back! So I laugh and tease her. 5 minutes later the lights go out again! At 1:13 she says she’s leaving and I tell her it’s not 1:15 yet. The lights come back on. ROFL! She wasn’t happy. Went home anyway. Heh heh

Possum picture in my Australia calendar and then one passed around of a super tiny, cute baby possum on Twitter by a friend! Year of the Possum for me? Hmm

2010

Sept/Oct 2010 Haven’t added anything here for a bit, but it does not mean the weird has not continued. Have two I want to get on here before I forget.

Ever since I started watching Phineas & Ferb as well as NCIS (both picked up from my stay at the hospital in July) everywhere I look someone on TV or real life has been mentioning ‘Stillwater’ (Gibbs’ hometown) Texas and Virginia, or the Tri-State Area (Dr Doofenshmirtz’ area of choice!).

Last night I was watching the Supernatural episode titles ‘Two and a Half Men’. When I finished watching it on the DVR and exited, the real Two and a Half Men show was playing on the TV.:P

Also, the book ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ has been showing up wherever I look. Have not read it, but saw it at Walmart (and I usually do not look at their book section), on a TV show as the book being read by someone, and then as a recommendation at Amazon while looking at something totally unrelated to books or the genre. All in one week. 😛

‘Don’t Mess With Old People’! Something my husband has been toting for years! I wrote a free flashfiction piece on the subject called ‘Old People’ and then a week later the movie ‘RED’ came out, which pretty much tells you the same thing. 😛

October was shock full of stuff. Here’s some more. Whatched “When in Rome” this week from one of the movie channels. In it is Dax Shepard who plays one of the ensorceled men. He has got a super cool tattoo on his arm of a tree with cherry blossoms. Hubby and I both admired it when we saw the film. After we finished, we were watching one of our shows, and as I fast forwarded past commercials, BAM, saw the tree tattoo again! Ad for Dax’s show “Parenthood”!

Saturday before, hubby and I sat down at 2:30pm so he could watch that week’s episode of “Supernatural”. I turned the TV on and it was on the CW and the show was being rerun and just started! Weird!

On 10/30 had a lot of clock hits. 11:11, 12:12, 1:23. Don’t normally get this many on the SAME DAY! Stuff has been pretty active these last couple of weeks. Wonder if it means anything.:P

May 2010 Hawk close encounters! Had two in as many weeks. First was a bizzare raid by a hawk when I went out to dinner with some writer buds and we pulled into a residentail area to find another restaurant with the GPS. Sucker dive bombed us and stopped in front of the car to give us the once over. He was so cute!! Second was at home, while I was in my chair in the front room watching TV getting over a cold. Looked out the window and there was another beautiful specimen looking at me from out fence! So cool! (Normally only see them from far off.)

This one is minor, but what the hey! After months and months of waiting for District 9 to hit the movie channels, I finally recorded it. Had to wait till Thursday to watch the recording. Next day saw a Tweet from A Lee Martinez saying he just watched it on Thursday night as well. Oooooo! (Okay, so yeah, I am easily amused. What’s your point? :P)

Feb 2010 – Word of the last few weeks has been Hamlet. I watched the BBC version with David Tenant and Patrick Stewart and now everyone is mention one version of Hamlet or another wherever I look. 🙂

Location fot he month has been Utah. Three instances in one day! First a friend sent me links to some 360 degree photos of several natural monuments there, one being the arch. Within minutes I opened up an email for picture manipulation and the one used in the example? Same arch as in the 360 picture. Then on the radio and TV mentions of Utah. Weird! (Never been there…Wonder if it’s a hint?)

2009

Dec 2009 – On 12/24 I kept hearing or seeing the work ‘Mojito’ everywhere! Also, I’ve had to see two new doctors and both times I went for the first visit – it SNOWED! This is Texas peeps, we don’t get much snow, and normally not till January. But both snowfalls have both been on appointment days when I am on the way! Eek!

Nov 2009 – So far this month it’s all been about the phrase “NAME Interrupted”. Everyone has been using it from the movie called “Girl Interrupted”. Last year I used the title for a fanfic on Supernatural I called “Winchester Interrupted”, it has now popped up twice in other shows this week and saw that a future SPN episode will be named “Sam Interrupted”. Lol. I even researched the film after the name first came to me out of nowhere and it seemed to fit.

Oct 2009 – Had started following Stephen K Cannel on Twitter and he announced that 21 Jump Street was free for viewing at Hulu. I’d seen bits of the show but never watched it and thought it might be fun to see an episode or two since this was where Johnny Depp got his big start. Then the weirdness began. First was the fact that the two episode pilot were done by Kim Manners (awesome director who died in 2008 and whose work I really started paying attention to while watchign Supernatural), then Peter Deloise is a regular, whom I’d gotten attached to watching SG-1 and he also made an appearance in SPN, and also add in Blu Mankuma, who’s been on SPN as well. Weird evening. 😛

Got a note from Ethan Nahte about Felicia Day’s video “When Galaxies Collide”. That same day, while reading FlashForward by Robert J Sawyer, I reached the part of the book where Lloyd Simco sees the Andromeda and Milky Way collide! See, I’m not kidding about this stuff! lol.

Sept 2009 – Been slacking on this Wall. Sigh… But! At Fencon, was talking to Kim from Texas 2013 (bid for World Con!) about a show she’d seen on DNA and plague/AID survivors. She went home and saw it would be on this very week! Bwahahaha! Just saying. Now to go program the DVR. Addendum: Not only did I watch the show, it ended up giving me an idea for a flash fic piece from an image they showed. It’s called Harbinger.

July 2009 – While reading Bruce Campbell’s “If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor” there was twice when I was reading during stoplights when I would hear a phrase on the radio and read it in the book within a minute of hearing it. I believe the phrases had to do with broken dreams (from the James Bond song) and also on a Jacktivity on a Neil Diamond group and hearing a noise in the forest. Freaky!

Wacthed and episode of Eureka and then roll back 26 years as I rewatched some episodes for Brisco County Jr with Bruce Campbell. Both, on the same day, used the plot to solve the case of “going back to the beginning”.

June 2009 – All the same numbers or getting sequential numbers on the clock all continue. Those are pretty much staple coincidence items for me. Went to the anime store on Saturday and there were two people who went to A-kon there. One fellow thought he knew me. I’m sure he must have passed by my table or something. Ended up asking me why I was there and even wanted a card. lol. Don’t normally meet people I know or have met at the store. Was fun! (No, I don’t get out much…)

Two full body animal eating of peeps within 3 days. First was Grumpy swallowing Dr Marshall in the Land of the Lost movie, second was a woman swallowed whole by a shark in Pushing Daisies. lol. Waiting to see if I can got for a hat trick on this. Heh heh.

May 2009 – May 1st and I’ve already had a flood of the things! All of them are connected in some way or other to Jim Beaver (awesome character actor) and his memoir book “Life’s That Way ->”. The book is a journal of the struggles and out pourings of human kindness that surrounded his wife’s diagnosis of cancer and her untimely and unexpected death. It was already creeping me out a little to be reading the book and finding out right away Cecily Adam’s was 45 when diagnosed (I just turned 45 a little over a month ago), but the further I read the more stuff stacked up till it all piled up and somewhat exploded yesterday.

Not only am I 45, the same age as his wife at the time, but their anniversary is a week before mine (the official one – don’t ask) and Jim’s b-day is one week after my husband’s. Luckily Cecily and my birthdays are about a month apart, so we didn’t go for a hat trick there. Phew. Still, I sent an email to hubby when I realized this and he responded with a quote we’ve bandied about a lot over the years. Wasn’t sure it was appropriate for the situation, but made it all the creepier as you will see. What hubby replied with was “But I don’t want to be a pie!” (Quote from the animated comedy spoof on the Great Escape – argh! Title escapes me!). So I got to reply to him and really freak him out then when I had to tell him that Mr Beaver and his wife used ‘pie’ as a term of endearment for each other. Oh yeah. It was definitely one of those days.

Still on May 1st and the coincidences kept rolling. Went to the movies to see “Wolverine”. Last week we’d had a giggle as we went to see “17 Again” and got given tickets for showroom 17. Well, when we got our tickets for “Wolverine” we got room 17 Again! Lol! I don’t make this stuff up, I swear!

Looks like May is going to be a coincidence flood month – here’s the latest. On Thursday on “Supernatural” Dean finally pushed Sam over the edge and they got into a fist fight. Sam got the upper hand and then chocked his brother, almost killing him, but drew back at the last minute. On Friday, I went to see Star Trek, where Kirk pissed off Spock to provoke him into a fist fight, Spock got the better of him, then started chocking him and pulled back at the last moment. Hmmm. And I didn’t write it down (so now I can’t totally recall) but there was another show that did another chocking scene. Weird weird weird.

April 2009 – While reading the Musashi Flex by Steve Perry (a book that had sat on my TBR pile for a while – trying someone new!), I noticed a tendency of speech to call women Fem’s and another form for men in everyday speech. Checked out HBO’s pilot for The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency which was done in Botswana, Africa, and there the custom is to call women Mma and there was another term for me. Again a spoken custom. Both used in exactly the same ways.

March 2009 – Was reading John Winchester’s Journal and was about to finish it when some books I ordered came in. I grabbed Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires Book 5 to take with, as I knew I would probably finish the Journal while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. I hit page 206 and read “The Lord of Misrule is out there somewhere…” The title of Rachel’s book 5 is “The Lord of Misrule”.

Shopping this past weekend, we were leaving a parking lot when two cars almost went head to head. They were exactly the same in just about every detail — silver Toyota Camrys.

A person did a review of an essay book and posted a link on a fan list I belong to. On a totally unrelated publisher list, one of the essay author’s brought up the review of the essay book she was in. Both posts were about the same review. Weird conversations ensued on both lists and it was really bizarre seeing them. That “It’s a Small World After All” syndrome strikes once again.

Had almost finished Tanya Huff’s The Heart of Valor. In the book, there had been some alien pigeons that would flock around the doctor and they couldn’t find a way to make them stop. Watching Kings on NBC, they had a problem with pigeons that would entrench themselves in a depression in the palace and they couldn’t find a way to make them leave.

Back in the day I’d watched the show Joan of Arcadia staring the young actors Amber Tamblyn and Chris Marquette. Had not seen them since the show was canceled, but within a few days of each other, I rediscovered them both in new shows/films. Marquette had a funny part in Race to Witch Mountain. Tamblyn is one of the primaries for the new show The Unusuals.

The operative words this month have been “Semper Fi”. Meaning ‘Always Faithful’ and used as a motto in the US Marine Corps, this sucker was popping up all over the place for me mostly as graffiti and posters on TV shows. As May is exploding with coincidences as you see above, one of them ties Jim Beaver to my streaks of these things yet again as he wrote a play (I saw the list today 5/2) called Semper Fi as well.

January/February 2009 – Spiders – Due to a short story I ran into by accident, I learned about the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer. In the movie (I went out and found it – sounded way too bizarre not to get it) there was a scene of a spider in the bed crawling over a passed out girl, which the protagonist gets into trouble about because he tried to grab it and she though he was doing something inappropriate. Within the same week, I was reading one of the Supernatural magazines (7 or 8, can’t remember which), and in an interview with Jensen Ackles, he mentioned finding a spider between the sheets of his bed one day.

Hubby tapped several movies from AMC’s 31 days of Oscars. One of them was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – in the movie, there is a seal called “Esme”, which is short for “Esmeralda”, not your common name or nickname, right? In less than a week I stared reading Roxanne Conrad’s Bridge of Shadows. The woman trapped in the secret compartment in the trunk of the car who almost died in the first chapter is named Esmeralda and the main protagonist calls her Esme.

Less than a week later, while still reading Bridge of Shadows, I had another coincidence crop up. In her book, Roxanne had used the term coyotes for the name of people who did human trafficking across the border. While that has been a topic used many times in movies and TV, I could not recall ever hearing the term before. Well, watching Medium that week, not only was it about human trafficking, they also actually used the term coyotes. A two fer from Roxanne’s book. Cool.

2008

December 2008 – Dawnson’s Creek. I bought season 6 of Dawson’s Creek to see Jensen Ackles as he was one of the recurring guest stars that last season. (I discovered his work during Smallville and Supernatural and have been slowly digging out other things he’s been in – he’s VERY good.) As I watched the season, suddenly there were Dawson Creek people and things popping out of the woodwork for me.

First one happened when we were flipping channels and stopped on South Park (which we hardly ever watch) and the episode revolved around a Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper and how it would evolve into a giant computer and take over the world ala Terminator. Then I finally got to see the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (long story on how I missed it years ago – and man do they cuss a bucket in this sucker), and freaked when James Van Der Beek (Dawson) shows up in it and pokes fun of the show. Then, My Bloody Valentine, which at the time was going to be a new release for Jensen Ackles, ends up also staring Kerr Smith, who was one of the principals of Dawson’s Creek! (I’d already been watching Joshua Jackson on Fringe, so he doesn’t count.)

Funnier still was when I did get to watch MBV, poor Jensen gets punched in the face by Kerr Smith. Something which also happened to him by Joshua Jackson in Dawnson’s Creek. Now he just needs to be punched by Van Der Beek and he will have a hat trick. heh heh.

Saw a car with a license plate only a couple of digits off of mine. Within less than 5 minutes, saw one only a few digits off of my husband’s.